Elementary School Silent Auction

We recently hosted a silent auction to benefit an initiative called Every Buddy’s Playground to update our playground equipment to be accessible for all. We expected/hoped to raise $1,000 and ended up at $4,382!

Auction items were not things but experiences. They included front row reserved seats to Kindergarten & 5th grade graduation, donuts with a teacher, baking with kitchen staff, nature walks, and most popular: principal for a day!

What worked:

• No cost. Any food or supplies needed for auction events were donated by the host. And shoutout Zeffy for the free payment platform :)

• No stuff. Parents were thrilled to give, not have to sell anything, and not have their student come home with various erasers/toys/tchotchkes.

• Flexible timing. We had this open Monday-Friday online. Not everyone can make it to an in-person event. Also, this project is benefitting our students with disabilities, which may have various challenges in attending a large event.

• It was a win-win-win! Students were excited about the opportunities and got their parents excited too. Everyone had a great time - students and their hosts! And money raised is supporting a great cause to benefit all our students.

One thing we learned: there’s a setting that allowed bidding to continue past closing time when people were still bidding. We had a few parents staying up until 11:59pm on Friday to make sure they got the winning bid, only to see the close time continue to get pushed back. But we found the setting and changed it pretty quickly.

You can see the form here: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/409a5dec-54e1-49c2-87ab-a986c932c82b